Jeff McLane, Inquirer Staff Writer

Ellis Hobbs has a hip flexor injury that would make it a "struggle" for the cornerback to be healthy enough to play in Sunday's game against the Colts, Eagles coach Andy Reid said.

The injury, revealed Wednesday, helped explain Hobb's performance against the Tennessee Titans when he and the Eagles defense were blitzed by receiver Kenny Britt for seven catches, 225 yards and three touchdowns.

Hobbs, however, said nothing of the injury during the game to his coaches or immediately afterward to reporters.

"To say those things is a cop out, that's why I'm saying, 'I'm taking my bumps and bruises like any other man,'" Hobbs said. "What [Britt] did on the field I don't want to take away from any of that, as far as being my opponent. Bad game, regardless of if I'm hurt. Nobody awards people for being hurt and playing. ... No one cares."

Yes, but doesn't there a come a point in the game where the inability to perform supercedes the unwritten NFL code of playing through an injury without complaint?

"There's not a certain code," Hobbs said. "They pay me a lot of money to play and I play to a point where I'm not a guy to sit there and complain. There's a lot of guys in this league that dog it, tank it."

Hobbs said the injury had surfaced even before the game.

"It's been a while," he said. "I'm not going to sit here and pinpoint anything ... and there was some stuff going on beyond the game itself."

Safety Quintin Mikell said that he had noticed in practices leading up to the game that something was bothering Hobbs. Reid said that Hobbs would not practice on Wednesday.

“You are dealing with a very tough individual,” Reid said of Hobbs. “He’s very quiet and doesn’t say much. As you go back and look at the tape, you can see where it was affecting him. He’s a tough nut and a very good football player. We want to make sure that he gets back and gets ready. He played through it. It became very tight after when he was sitting around.”

Reid said that Dimitri Patterson, who is expected to start Sunday in place of Hobbs, is only there because of Hobbs' injury.

Reid got testy when a reporter pressed him about when he found out about Hobbs' injury.

"Is there something I don’t know here?" he said. "Listen closely, as time went on, it tightened up after the game and got progressively worse.”

In other injury news, Reid said that DeSean Jackson had passed his independent head examination, but that the receiver is still day-to-day and questionable for Sunday's game. Tackle King Dunlap (knee) wasn't going to practice Wednesday and was also a stretch to be ready by Sunday, Reid said.

Defensive tackle Brodrick Bunkley was going to wear an elbow brace and was still up in the air for the Colts, Reid said.